The World Wide Web has become a service platform that competes with traditional media, such as newspapers and magazines, for timely content publication, aggregation, and delivery. Such content may be delivered via a web page, for example. Other such content may be delivered via a RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed. RSS is a type of web feed allowing the broadcast, or syndication, of content that is frequently updated, such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video, in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is also called a “feed,” “web feed,” or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. RSS feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content quickly and automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites.
A standardized XML (Extensible Markup Language) file format allows the information to be published once via an RSS feed and viewed by many different programs. The RSS feed may be subscribed to and viewed with a web browser or a specific web feed reader. The web browser or feed reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds.
The display of web pages and web feeds on a mobile wireless communications device has become desirable. However, the display of such on a mobile wireless communications device presents challenges not present in the display of web pages or web feeds on a traditional personal computer, such as a laptop. A mobile wireless communications device typically has a small screen with a limited viewing area. Therefore, a user of a mobile wireless communications device may be required to scroll through a large amount of advertisements or other information on a web page or web feed before reaching the content (e.g. a news article) that he wishes to read. Furthermore, a mobile wireless communications device may have an Internet connection that is relatively slow in comparison to an internet connection used by a personal computer.
Such user annoyances may arise when a user browsing a linking web page chooses a linked web article he would like to read by selecting a hyperlink associated with the linked web article. Rather than displaying the content portion of the linked web article when the hyperlink is selected, a conventional mobile wireless communications device displays the entire linked web article itself, which may include advertisements or other undesired content.
One way to provide a web article that opens directly to its content portion (for ease of reading by a user of a mobile wireless communications device) is by embedding certain tags in the HTML or XML file of the web article. For example, if creating both a linking web page and a linked web article, a web author may embed an “anchor” tag in both the linking web page and the linked web article to facilitate such a function.
The HTML tag <a name=“article1”>News Article 1</a> may be embedded at the place in the linked web article where the content portion thereof begins. Likewise, <a href=“http://www.article1.com/main.html#article1”>Read Article 1</a> may be embedded as a hyperlink on the linking web page. When a user clicks on the Read Article 1 hyperlink on the linking web page, the linked web article will be displayed on the user's mobile wireless communications device starting from the location of the anchor tag. Of course, this solution requires that the appropriate HTML or XML tags be embedded into the both the linking web page and the linked web article, and is of no help to users viewing sites without such features.
Accordingly, a need remains for a mobile wireless communications device that facilitates easy and quick reading of a linked web article.